Well, I guess some people were surprised by
the score I ended up giving Mugen
Souls. I really wanted to like
this game, but as the review shows that
didn't happen. All I can say is it's my
honest experience with the game, and I'll
leave it at that. In other news, Ys
on the Vita is quite spectacular! Now that I
have a full party combat has gotten
exceptionally fun. I'm also playing Silent
Hill Book of Memories on Vita for
review, so keep an eye out for that.

My inbox has been barren of late, I guess
it's time for another contest to get ya'll
to write in? Send me your ideas for the next
contest!

Anyway, on to your letters!

The Letters

Jet Beat Radio

‏Dear Wheels

Sorry I didn't write you sooner but I have a
good excuse!

Jet Set Radio.

No seriously. Jet set radio!
Man I love that game. If happiness
were a game that game would be Jet Set
Radio!

Wheels

I
never played it much past the
demo, but it sure does have a
great look to it, and an amazing
soundtrack! I guess being a
Dreamcast hater (for stupid
reasons related to the Saturn)
made me miss some great games.
Perhaps I should try the new HD
version? Maybe even on the Vita?

But I'm sure you disagree. You ALWAYS
disagree! You NEVER listen to me!

Wheels

Maybe
I will after I actually play the
game! Actually let's just say
that this is the case, Jet
Set Radio is terrible, how
can you even enjoy something so
awful? Your taste in games is
clearly questionable at best.

So what's the game you equate with
happiness?

-BEAT

Wheels

Recently
that has been anything Ys related
and lots of Shin Megami
Tensei. Ys games
get straight to the point and
are filled with excellent music
so I always find them enjoyable
to just pick up and play.
There's nothing quite like the
accomplishment of beating an Ys
game on hard. As for Shin
Megami Tensei, those games
always have solid combat with
plenty of skill variety,
character development, and
strategy so they just make me
happy even if I'm getting
utterly destroyed. Older games I
can always go back to for some
happiness would have to be Final
Fantasy VI and Chrono
Trigger. They never get
old!

P.S. RPGs Suck

Wheels

Well,
Jet Set Radio has lots of
"grinding" which would
technically make it an RPG, so
what do you think about your
statement now?

Genre Shock

@AskWheels Quick Q&A: Should
System Shock 1 & 2 be covered on our
site? They came in the 90s, when RPG
elements were much less common...

-JuMeSyn

Wheels

I
would say so. Sometimes genre
definitions are a bit too strict
and we then end up putting games
in a category they don't fit
well in. For example, Dishonored
gets put in the Action Adventure
category, but does it really fit
there? With so much choice,
character upgrade options
(though limited) and emphasis on
playing the main character the
way you want to, it really fits
more into the Action-RPG
category for me. Sometimes we
focus in too much on the stat
elements of RPGs, and not enough
on the story and character
choices that are the other
reasons that tabletop RPGs
became so popular. Granted, we
can just put everything in the
RPG category that has elements
of this, but I think the games
that do belong there are often
quite clear. So the long and
short of it is that yes I think
we should be able to cover them.
Afterall, do these games really
fit in well with first person
shooters?

Connect Bed of Roses (1933) to
Cosmic Fantasy!

Wheels

Bed
of Roses was distributed
by RKO -> RKO distributed the
original King Kong ->
Ubisoft published a game based
on the remake of King Kong
-> Ubisoft published Lunar
Dragon Song -> Working
Designs published the Sega CD
and PSX versions of the first
two Lunar games ->
Working Designs publish Cosmic
Fantasy 2 -> Cosmic
Fantasy 2 is a sequel to Cosmic
Fantasy.

Connect Bright Leaf with Vixen
357!

Wheels

Bright
Leaf was distributed by
Warner Bros. -> Sega helped
Warner Bros. co-publish The
Matrix Online -> Sega
published Shiren the
Wanderer for Wii in Japan
-> Atlus published the Wii Shiren
game in the US -> Atlus
owns CareerSoft -> CareerSoft
was originally part of Nippon
Computer Systems Corp. ->
Nippon Computer Systems Corp.
published Vixen 357.

Checkmate

@AskWheels Describe, in detail, all the ways
Chess is better than anything else.

-Falselogic

Wheels

There's
so much to be said about what an
amazing and enduring game Chess
is. Heck there's whole books
written just about the endgame
in Chess, not even about it as a
whole. The game could be the
textbook definition of "easy to
learn, hard to master." I wont
lie and say I'm good at the
game, because I'm not. I still
love playing some Chess and I
can't recommend it enough to
anyone that hasn't actually
played the game. There's plenty
of computerized versions free of
charge all over the internet!
Chess is good for the brain.

Legend of wild Dragoons

First, my opinion on Legend of Dragoon.
At the time I first played it, it was
competing with FFVII and I was still
in my stage where I bought every jrpg I came
across.

First, the pros:

1-The music: Legend of Dragoon's
music was excellent, and it quite honestly
left its contemporaries in the dust on this
issue (other than Chrono Cross,
which has yet to be matched by any other rpg
in that area).

Wheels

I'll have to give the soundtrack a
listen some time, as I can't really
recall any of it. The name of the
composer doesn't seem to ring a
bell, and it appears he died at a
young age due to liver cancer,
yikes! That is awful...

2-The setting: Say what you want about the
game's story. It is yet another
cliched save the world story where one of
the main heroines is the vessel for the
ultimate evil. However, the setting,
with the various races that once existed,
the entire mess with humanity being enslaved
at one time, and the dark (for the era in
which the game was developed) themes were
interesting.

Wheels

Oh, for sure there were some
interesting elements about the
story. If I didn't dislike the
gameplay so much I would probably
enjoy exploring the setting some
more! Certainly not a bad aspect of
the game though.

Now the cons:

1-No real exploration: This was when the
'looks like you are walking around but there
isn't really anywhere to go' tradition that
was made so famous with FFX got its
start. To be honest, I deeply resent
the introduction of that aspect of gameplay
to the genre.

Wheels

I don't mind it so much, but I
remember it being particularly bad
here. Thing is, many older games
showed that the genre was clearly
headed in that direction. Sure many
had exploration, but it was no more
than window dressing in the most
linear of RPGs. Many people like a
more straightforward approach, and I
imagine this is actually one of the
appeals of this game to some.

2- Contrast between cutscene and regular
visuals: This is endemic to the genre in
general and at the time the game was made in
particular. However, the degree to
which it was displayed in LOD was quite
ridiculous.

Wheels

Well, this is more of an issue with
the graphic power behind the system
in question. This gap has really
only just closed with the current
generation of consoles, where
in-game cutscenes look just about as
good and are the preferable method.
I'll grant you the difference can be
jarring, but I think not doing great
looking cutscenes would have been
even worse. Can you imagine all the
big moments in Final Fantasy VII
instead done with the blocky
in-engine character models?

3- Story pacing issues: This is
something that is also endemic to the
genre. Irregular pacing tends to throw
off the enjoyment of the game itself,
particular in the beginning and near the
end.

Wheels

Story pacing is something that seems
to be really hard to get right in
games, so I can't fault them all too
much here.

4- Inventory: All jrpgs with limited
inventories have this problem, but in LOD
it was godawful

However, despite all my issues with it, I
honestly thought it was a good game, if not
a legendary favorite.

Wheels

I understand that, I mean just
because I hated the game and many
others did doesn't necessarily mean
it is a bad game. We all have
different tastes! You seem to be
more critical of it than many fans,
which is nice. Recognizing and
addressing the major faults in a
game you like is a tough thing to
do!

Now, on to the Wild Arms
series. I have a lot of issues with
this series. The original was a
straight-up jrpg in the classic style with a
weird combination of 'wild west' and
medieval themes. The second game had a
sort-of anti-hero protagonist thing going
with the demon-possession issue, which made
it a lot of fun to play for those with a
secret adoration for transformations and
overpowered attacks. However, it was
at the third installation that I started
losing interest. To be blunt, the
characters started getting less interesting
and more childish rapidly, even as the
actual quality of the narrative went
up. This continued into later
installations of the series, until I stopped
paying attention altogether after the fifth
game. In a way, this series is a
perfect example of the path the jrpg genre
has been taking in general, with a
re-gearing toward younger and lighter
audiences with cookie-cutter themes and
characters grafted in from shounen anime and
manga. Probably the only part of these
games I haven't thought was going down in
quality was the music...

Wheels

Well, the fifth entry is actually
the last entry in the series as of
right now. So you haven't missed
anything after it, because there
hasn't been anything! Though I
haven't played the other games as of
yet, I can see what you mean. I
loved the original game, and none of
the follow ups were ever able to
grab my attention. I'll still give
them a try, but the only thing I
know for sure is I'll enjoy the
music. Even Sony seems to have
stopped caring about the series
sadly. There's still untapped
potential in this franchise!

I also want to remark on the heavy increase
in the number of mission-based
dungeon-crawler/normal rpg hybrids that have
taken over a good portion of the
market. To be blunt, I dislike games
that exist just to give the player an excuse
to kill time, and that is basically what
this type is. While an excessively
short game is a problem in and of itself,
games that produce dozens of worthless
'fetch this' and 'kill that' missions
as an excuse to extend the game's life
without any extra story get old really
fast.

Sincerely,
Travis Lucius

Wheels

While I enjoy many of the games that
follow such a pattern, like Monster
Hunter, this is becoming a
real issue. There's way too many
RPGs that are just lame Monster
Hunter clones and in the West
we seem to have the same issue with
Diablo clones. Look,
developers, the originals are great
for many different reasons, which
you don't seem to get when trying to
copy their success. Just because we
love Diablo and Monster
Hunter also does not mean we
want every game to be like them!
Stop this!